TYPES OF GARDENS 



Another tendency to be avoided is to exalt the formal type of garden 

 above all others, and to insist upon the architectural treatment of the 

 garden in all situations, and under all conditions. The man who 

 loves formality unduly is apt to yield to the temptation to view every 

 garden site as a blank space where he has to create an effect by his 

 own exertions ; and when he chances upon a site which has already 

 some interesting characteristics of its own he may, quite possibly, be so 

 ill-advised as to destroy them, so as to clear the ground for the build- 

 ing up of his preconceived and possibly less appropriate scheme. This 

 drastic form of preparation is objectionable ; the man who resorts to 

 it stamps himself as inefficient and as incapable of adapting himself, 

 as an artist should, to the demands of his subject. He is cursed with 

 a mechanical mind and he follows the engineer's instinct for con- 

 struction rather than the artist's inclination to base a personal 

 creation upon acceptable facts. 



The really accomplished garden-maker must possess a rather remark- 

 able combination of qualities. The architectural sense he must have 

 and he must be an engineer of some skill as well, but there must be 

 also, in his composition, a large measure of artistic imagination and 

 of that indefinable quality which is called taste. It is only the 

 possession of this complex endowment that will enable him to attack 

 with certainty and to overcome with discretion the constantly 

 varying problems which are presented to him in his professional 

 practice. He must have no stereotyped convictions about the 

 legitimacy of any specified form of gardening, no rigid preference for 

 any conventional style of designing ; and he must never be above 

 taking a hint from nature when she has something to tell him that 

 he ought to know. Indeed, he ought to be quite ready to realise 

 that the successful carrying out of one of his designs on a certain site 

 is a reason against rather than for the repetition of the same arrange- 

 ment on another site where the conditions under which he had to 

 work could not by any possibility be identical or even approximately 

 the same. 



There is in Mr. Thomas H. Mawson's exhaustive book on " The 

 Art and Craft of Garden-Making," a passage which sums up exceed- 

 ingly well the whole duty of the designer. He says, " Everything 

 within the scope of the garden scheme, whether building, arrange- 

 ment of trees, shrubs, expanse of water, grass lawns, or whatever it 

 be, should be designed or planned with due consideration to its use 

 and fitness, proportion and balance. To attain this completeness and 

 unity of the whole implies that to a knowledge of architecture the 

 chief essential must be added the study of the technique of good 



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